And yet I am not
ignorant that in divers particular sciences, as of the
jurisconsults, the mathematicians, the rhetoricians, the
philosophers, there are set down some small memorials of the
schools, authors, and books; and so likewise some barren relations
touching the invention of arts or usages. But a just story of
learning, containing the antiquities and originals of knowledges and
their sects, their inventions, their traditions, their diverse
administrations and managings, their flourishings, their
oppositions, decays, depressions, oblivions, removes, with the
causes and occasions of them, and all other events concerning
learning, throughout the ages of the world, I may truly affirm to be
wanting; the use and end of which work I do not so much design for
curiosity or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of learning,
but chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose, which is this in
few words, that it will make learned men wise in the use and
administration of learning. For it is not Saint Augustine's nor
Saint Ambrose's works that will make so wise a divine as
ecclesiastical history thoroughly read and observed, and the same
reason is of learning.
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